Project: Family Rules Canvas

November 22, 2009

Last week my friend Molly and I got together for a craft afternoon. Our goal: to create wall hangings featuring the rules of our household. We each spent a bit of time the day before thinking about what we wanted to say. We wanted rules that encouraged the best from everyone in a lighthearted and loving way. You can click on the pictures to enlarge them and see what we each came up with.

I got there around 1:30 in the afternoon with 6 kids in tow. Since she has 7 kids of her own, the house was immediately busy. We’re both used to chaos, though, and worked hard all afternoon. It turned out to be rather an ambitious project for a single afternoon, but we were determined. We finally got it mostly wrapped up by 6, at which times the kids were all starving, and I had to pile them quickly into the car for dinner at home.

My rules:

Work with excellence

Hug mom and dad no matter how tall you are

Compliment the cook

Look for ways to serve

Encourage others– share in their joy

Keep your promises

Thank God for this family

Choose words that are true, kind, and necessary

Dream big, smile often, forgive always

Molly’s words:

Thank God for this family

Obey Mom and Dad

Dream big, smile often, forgive always

Count your blessings

Kiss the cook

Say I love you and give lots of hugs

Mind your own beeswax

Work hard, never give up

Clean up after yourself

No fussing, whining or complaining

—

PROJECT HOW TO

Supplies

Artist’s canvas– ours were about 18×24, and can be found at Michael’s or other craft store ($6 on sale)

Colored scrapbook paper in a variety of colors (if you use 12×12 you’ll have to trim it down to printer size)

Computer program with a variety of available fonts– you can download more off the internet if you know how

Paint the front and sides of your canvas with craft paint in a neutral color and let it dry overnight. (Molly did this the day before)

Choose the rules that you want to feature. For an 18×24 canvas, 8 – 10 rules is about right.

Choose 3-4 papers that will be the background of your project and cut them to fit the canvas.

Choose 8-10 papers onto which you will print your rules. The busier the pattern, the bolder your font will need to be so that it can be easily read.

In a word processing or artist’s program on your computer, experiment with large fonts. Do some trial prints on plain paper to make sure the sizes and page placement are right. You will probably want to use a horizontal paper setup so that you can maximize the size of your letters. You may also want to print half of a rule on one piece of paper and half on a second piece of paper.

Once you get words the size you want on scrap paper, it is time to trim your scrapbook paper to fit into your printer. Molly’s husband set her printer to accept 3 inch strips of paper (put in narrow edge first) but you can also simply trim scrapbook paper to 8.5 inch width, run it through the printer, and then trim it even more once it comes out of the printer. We spent quite a bit of time getting words to print out just the way we wanted. It was probably the trickiest part of the project.

Once the rules are printed, trim each strip so there’s not too much blank paper above and below each rule. This will also allow you to fit more rules onto your canvas.

When you have everything trimmed, arrange it to fit your canvas. We originally saw this craft done with the ‘Family Rules’ header at the top of the canvas. However, we both had so many rules that we wanted to feature that we opted to run our headers down the sides of our canvases, where we had a little extra space anyway due to the size of our print-outs. When arranging we also tried to make adjoining rules not have the same color or font, just to keep it interesting.

Once you have everything laid out, it is time to glue it all down. We used a can of spray adhesive and glued things down one piece at a time. The spray adhesive was fairly easy to work with. A couple times we even had to lift and replace a piece of paper that got laid down crooked.

The last step is to put some kind of coating over the top of the whole project to seal it. We opted for Mod Podge, which worked OK, except that it made the paper slightly wavy. I think if I did it again, I would use a spray-on sealer instead of Mod Podge, or I would weight down the project very firmly as it dried, which hopefully would cut down on the waves in the paper. Overall, though, it was a really fun project, one that has me thinking of where else I might be able to glue words of wisdom.

What a wonderful and fun idea! I am so NOT crafty, but I’m wondering if I could do this. I could definitely buy the paper and print the rules and glue them on the canvas. I’m not sure about the painting, though. I think I’ll try it!